On Invicta Sport, Issy Fassnidge joined Bartholomew to talk all things Skeleton, as she prepares to represent Team GB in the 2026 winter Olympic games.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00 Ken future skeleton star, Issy Fasnich is set to make her debut in the 2026 Winter Olympic Games
00:07 after she's been called up to represent Great Britain. Hailing from Sevenoaks at 19 years of
00:13 age she is studying her A-levels but hopes to focus full-time on the amazing opportunity to
00:19 represent her country. So what is it about the sport that attracts the future Olympic candidate?
00:26 Well the sport is part of the Winter Olympic Games and consists of a single person lying
00:30 head first on a sled flying fast down an ice track with the aim to get to the end of the track in the
00:35 quickest possible time which means competitors will be travelling at staggering speeds of 90
00:40 miles per hour with your chin centimeters from the ice. In Issy's case the idea of travelling
00:45 at astonishing speeds was all it took for her to get hooked and find a new love for skeleton.
00:51 So what's next for Issy? Well she plans to complete her A-levels as well as boosting her
00:56 skill set in the sport. Also she looks to improve from last season where she won her first medal
01:02 at the under 20 junior European Championships in only her second ever competitive race.
01:08 The future Sevenoaks star's journey is truly inspiring as she has had to overcome multiple
01:15 injuries in her young career from tearing a tendon in her hamstring to a broken spine which
01:20 has meant she has had to miss significant time out on the track. But she has not let these injuries
01:25 stop her from training, progressing in the sport, working hard towards her main goal to achieve her
01:30 dreams of winning a medal in the 2026 and 2030 Winter Olympic Games. So if you enjoy racing at
01:38 astounding speeds watch out for Issy at the Winter Olympic Games. Well before she gets there she's
01:45 joined us now in the studio, well virtually. Thank you so much Issy, welcome to the programme,
01:50 it's really good to have you here. Now where do we start? Well where did it start for you? Because
01:55 there's not so many skeleton tracks that I've kind of heard of locally, correct me if I'm wrong,
01:59 how did you get into it? No, so I started with Tombridge Athletics, a club, and I was doing
02:06 athletics there and then I heard of the Girls for Gold scheme which is like how I got into skeleton
02:12 so then I applied to the Girls for Gold scheme and I trialled up in Bath a lot of it was because
02:17 that's where we train now and then after a few, like a good two, three months I then got selected
02:25 to go to Norway for a confirmation camp and then from there I got selected onto the team. And I
02:31 mean you're travelling all over the place now, you know, competing, what's it like? I mean you must
02:36 have quite a busy schedule at the moment. Yeah it's definitely busy now getting into winter season,
02:43 usually my training works we do six months of the summer so from April through to kind of October
02:50 time it's all in the gym, we're based in Bath so it's a lot of like, you know, leg press, lots of
02:56 sprinting on the sprint track to get us ready for the push start and then obviously as you probably
03:01 know there's no ice in England so then from October all the way through to March we train
03:07 away so pre-season in Latvia and then from there we kind of race around Europe and the rest of the
03:14 world. That's incredible stuff, we just saw some pictures there on the screen of just the sheer
03:18 speed that you're travelling at as you're going, I mean you've got to have a certain mindset
03:23 haven't you to enjoy that speed and to really just put yourself straight into it. Talk to me about
03:28 that, when did you kind of realise right this is the sport for me? Well when I applied to do it I
03:34 absolutely had like no idea about what I was getting myself into. I've always been a bit of a
03:41 speed freak and loved the adrenaline as well as being quite just a determined athlete and
03:47 that kind of was one of the traits that GB saw in me to like get me in this process.
03:53 But yeah it's kind of just I just love speed and as I got more and more into it I realised how cool
03:59 this sport was, it's like a roller coaster but 10 times better and then you have to put in the
04:05 element that you're controlling the sled as well so if you mess up it's on you, it's not like
04:09 Thorpe Park. No no not like Thorpe Park at all, no no it looks incredible. But now you've been
04:14 selected for the Winter Olympics, tell me when did you first hear the name Lizzie Arnold and
04:19 realise that you could potentially be following in her footsteps? I have a very vivid memory of
04:26 her coming through on her bus after she just won a gold and that was the first time I'd ever heard
04:30 of her but at that point I didn't know that it was for skeleton, I kind of just knew that this
04:35 was an amazing lady who was from Sevenoaks that had won a gold medal and then obviously as I got
04:39 into skeleton I understood that Lizzie Arnold did skeleton and it's really inspiring to have
04:45 someone like Lizzie Arnold who's a two-time gold medalist come from Sevenoaks as well.
04:50 Oh it's incredible stuff, I mean how did you feel yourself being
04:53 chosen to represent the whole of Great Britain?
04:56 It's quite a surreal feeling, it's kind of something that like in your dreams you're
05:03 kind of like oh my gosh one day maybe I'll be an Olympian but for me that's actually a reality
05:09 if everything goes to plan so it's a feeling like no weather, the excitement and the joy that you
05:14 feel once you get selected and then coming through the program and doing the training and then like
05:20 you get to travel to all these amazing countries doing what you love, it's just great really.
05:26 It's fantastic, what have your sort of friends and family said because you know you told us about the
05:30 strict regime that you're on, the fact that you're travelling all the time,
05:34 you must miss them from time to time.
05:36 Yeah definitely, definitely there's a lot as most athletes would say there's a lot you have to give
05:43 up to be in sport and to be as determined and you have to be so on it with the training that you do
05:48 miss out on things that maybe you know you don't want to miss out on and it is tough but at the end
05:53 of the day the main goal is to get that gold and whatever I have to do to get there is I'll do it.
06:00 Absolutely and we mentioned there in that short video that you actually developed a spinal fracture
06:07 as you were going through the sort of motions with taking up the sport, talk to me about
06:12 overcoming that, that must have been quite difficult. Yeah it's a lot of skeletons, obviously
06:18 a lot of it is physical but a lot of it is mental as well and especially with injuries
06:23 becoming like coming, getting over mental barriers is a massive part of the sport because you're
06:28 already doing something which is kind of ridiculous you know sliding at 80 miles an hour,
06:33 getting yourself down a course but doing it after coming back from an injury like that made it 10
06:38 times harder because you get on the sled after being told be super careful to go down at 80
06:44 miles an hour and run as fast as you can it was like too extreme. Yeah the mental battle afterwards
06:50 can be can be tough but you know we got through it so that's always good. Well thank you so much
06:56 for joining us, just before we go very quickly what's been your highlight so far? Oh that's a
07:02 tricky one, I think so far would be becoming the bronze medalist at the Ends 20 Junior Championships
07:09 and also just the whole process of seeing where I came, where I came from to like where I am now and
07:17 the future ahead is looking super exciting too. Well Izzy thank you so much for joining us,
07:22 we'll be sure to follow your journey as it continues.